Meet "Chris", Merri's New Mate

Despite the high winds and subfreezing temperatures at Fox Hall on Sunday afternoon (April 3), Imelda Joson and Edwin Aguirre were finally able to get close-up shots of the intruder male falcon’s leg band, which reads “38/BD.”

“This confirmed our partial visual sighting of the band on March 30 and 31,” notes Joson. “We could make out only the ‘38’ and the ‘D’ because the wind was constantly shaking our spotting scope.”

According to Tom French, Ph.D., assistant director of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife, this falcon was banded on June 9, 2014, at the Christian Science Church administration building in Boston. “He moved at least as far south as New York City during his first winter,” he says.

The bird has three other siblings: one male (39/BD) and two females (65/BD and 66/BD). “The female, 65/BD, was killed at Boston’s Logan Airport on August 3, 2014,” says French.

French says previous sightings of Merri’s new mate after it fledged included a photo taken by birder Steven Sachs on November 28, 2015, at Orchard Beach in the Bronx, after the bird took a bath in a puddle in the parking lot.

This year’s nesting season will be the first for “Chris,” as Merri’s new mate has been nicknamed. “Based on our observations of his behavior since December, he is quite immature and inexperienced, but we hope Merri will be able to teach him how to hatch the eggs and raise the chicks,” says Joson.

It’s possible that Lance was the one who fertilized the eggs before he was driven off the nest site by Chris, but we’ll never know for sure (unless we do a paternity test!). Chris won’t know the difference so he will accept the clutch of eggs as his own.